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PC obsolescence is obsolete

extremetech.com

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Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#81

Post by rhinosix »

The desktop PC is almost obsolete.

We spent a lot of time making PCs powerful. Then we spent more time to shrink them in size. Now they're just components to be combined with other hardware to make new tech.

PCs, smart phones, tablets have pretty much run their course.

What excites me is that it’s anyone’s game to build the next hardware. And we're not going to just seeing one new technology being built - we have the tools to branch off into all sorts of hardware - 3D printers, wearable computers, robotics, home automation, autonomous vehicles, biotechnology.

Personally the only thing I need a powerful desktop PC for is video editing. For everything else - writing, drawing, communications, there’s no reason I should be chained to a desk for the sake of power. All I need is a basic HUD, LEAP motion and a virtual keyboard, which aren’t too far off. If I need to do something intensive I can just tell my desktop or a network to get to work and send me back the results.

The idea of having to sit down at a desk and look at a flat panel, or being crippled by a half-assed mobile device seems antiquated.

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#82

Post by Silhouette »

wes-exp wrote: post #57
Silhouette wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad, but true. Faced with the reality that well-designed, flexible, modular systems have simply become too good, manufacturers are now effectively building in forced obsolescence, either tying components together (the Apple way) or arbitrarily declaring that only certain combinations are permitted (which also works with consumables, like the way my HP colour printer refused to print a black and white document the oth…

Nerfing hardware artificially can be beneficial to the consumer. I'm sure many things have a lot of their cost not in physical production, but in engineering/design. Software would be an extreme example of this. This being the case, nerfing allows different price points to be offered in order to more efficiently pay back engineering costs on the overall line. This is a win/win for the consumer and the seller compared…

I understand the market segmentation argument, but I fail to see how shipping a new generation of product, at a higher price than the previous generation, where the analogous model from the previous generation was unambiguously and objectively superior in specification, can possibly be benefitting anyone who buys the new, more expensive, inferior device.

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#83

Post by russell »

keithpeter wrote: post #56
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less on topic, but more on the picture: I was wondering about that image. Something struck me as off. And then I realized that the computer had a steering wheel. So for those interested, yes, it _is_ odd for a computer to have a steering wheel that large. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

"Many a prognosticator who has tried to envision the future has been tripped up by a failure to correctly anticipate the direction of technological change." I straight away thought of Kubrik's 2001. The complete failure to imagine mobile phones. Floyd uses a fixed video phone to phone home from the space ship. Personal mobile technology is the thing. Back nearer the topic: When I can hook my phone up to a monitor and…

If you remember "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1960s) set around the year 2000, one of the characters, a reporter I believe, had a mobile phone that was the size of a briefcase. Another character marveled that he must be rather well off because mobile phones were so expensive.

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#84

Post by cupwithyourname »

freehunter wrote: post #16
donpdonp wrote: post #11

Core i7? PC Hardware hit a usability plateau with the Core 2 Duo. For modest tasks, my 4.5 year old thinkpad and home desktop are both Core 2 Duo and perform most tasks fabulously. I do look forward to an upgrade but I have thought the same thing that this article states - that PCs are lasting much much longer than they used to. What is more interesting is smaller hardware. Mini-ITX systems, The RaspberryPi, and ATME…

It is funny that hardware has taken a turn towards slower/lower-end. Appliance computing, I guess. There was a mad dash to make everything as fast as possible, then when it was faster than really required, attention shifted to making computers that are specifically designed for various tasks. Why have one computer that's not really good at anything (but does it fast enough to not care) when you can have a half dozen…

Maybe I live in a different universe, but I feel like computers are so slow these days. How is everyone claiming that are sufficiently fast?

Starting up Outlook takes 10 full seconds (just the splash screen consumes half of that time). When I open up a web browser or click a link in an email, it takes about 5 seconds to fully load. Even distilling a file to pdf or loading Facebook takes almost 5 seconds.

I don't think it's an issue of my computer being particularly slow. Everyone at work with their quad core processors and 6gb of ram seem to just sit and wait without noticing. Have you ever been in someone's office while they search for an email? It takes minutes! And don't even try doing any work while Adobe is trying to update or the Antivirus scanner is running...

I spend so much time waiting for a computer. Waiting for IDEs to redraw, waiting for my computer to let me disconnect my usb drive, waiting for splash screens. What is going on?

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#85

Post by freehunter »

rogerbinns wrote: post #46
freehunter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a valid case for "powerful" home servers. Centrally backing up all the PCs in the house and streaming media to computers/TVs/consoles/tablets are two things I do in my house with my server. Granted it's not a brand new system, but it's a Core 2 Quad with 8GB of RAM, 20TB of hard drive space, and a Radeon 5700. Streaming and storing HD video isn't cheap. This centralized server is more cost-effective and conv…

You don't need need memory or CPU power for streaming or backups, unless you are doing on the fly transcoding. You do need storage connectivity but even USB2 has a theoretical throughput of 60 megabytes per second while you'll get practical throughput of ~35 megabytes per second on gigabit ethernet. The only time I saw my ~2005 era system have non-trivial CPU usage was when doing encryption, and even then it would pe…

Encryption and compression are what the CPU and memory are for. The video card is for transcoding to deliver to the target system. It's mainly just a re-used system, but you wouldn't be able to do it with a PII and 64MB of RAM.

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#86

Post by jzawodn »

cupwithyourname wrote: post #84
freehunter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny that hardware has taken a turn towards slower/lower-end. Appliance computing, I guess. There was a mad dash to make everything as fast as possible, then when it was faster than really required, attention shifted to making computers that are specifically designed for various tasks. Why have one computer that's not really good at anything (but does it fast enough to not care) when you can have a half dozen…

Maybe I live in a different universe, but I feel like computers are so slow these days. How is everyone claiming that are sufficiently fast? Starting up Outlook takes 10 full seconds (just the splash screen consumes half of that time). When I open up a web browser or click a link in an email, it takes about 5 seconds to fully load. Even distilling a file to pdf or loading Facebook takes almost 5 seconds. I don't thin…

Do you have an SSD?

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#87

Post by WildUtah »

greedo wrote: post #73
Zirro wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I was quite surprised that Mountain Lion was a fee upgrade" My knowledge of American anti-competition laws is lacking, but I remember back when they were able to release iOS-upgrades for the iPhone, but not the iPod Touch for free. At the time, there was supposedly something on the legal side of things which they were afraid to run afoul with by releasing free iPod Touch updates. I suppose, if they were to release n…

It was due to the way Apple had been accounting for OS upgrades, not due to competitive/monopoly concerns.

Specifically it's because Apple likes to take the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit for operating system development. The R&E credit requires that you work on a new product and not on simple refinement of an existing product and its features. There are a lot of subjective factors involved in qualifying and Apple felt more secure by requiring some money to upgrade. The big advantage was not the income but the big fat check from the federal government at the end of the year.

The R&E credit is a pork barrel scam for big companies with clever accounting departments, of course. But if it's there, why not take it?

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#88

Post by tedunangst »

rdl wrote: post #40
donpdonp wrote: post #11

Core i7? PC Hardware hit a usability plateau with the Core 2 Duo. For modest tasks, my 4.5 year old thinkpad and home desktop are both Core 2 Duo and perform most tasks fabulously. I do look forward to an upgrade but I have thought the same thing that this article states - that PCs are lasting much much longer than they used to. What is more interesting is smaller hardware. Mini-ITX systems, The RaspberryPi, and ATME…

There were a few features released even after Nehalem which makes me basically uninterested in pre-Westmere CPUs. AES-NI is the big one. Improvements to VT-x and VT-d for virtualization performance and security are other big ones. Pure CPU clock hasn't been increasing, and number of cores isn't useful for many tasks due to difficulty programming, but CPU features are still a big deal. FMA with Haswell is going to be…

AES is huge. It's the difference between "let me resume that VM for one second and suspend it again" and "well, I'll just wait until the next time I resume it and hope I remember what I was going to do". (Given VMs that live on an encrypted drive.)

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#89

Post by MattRogish »

WildUtah wrote: post #87
greedo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was due to the way Apple had been accounting for OS upgrades, not due to competitive/monopoly concerns.

Specifically it's because Apple likes to take the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit for operating system development. The R&E credit requires that you work on a new product and not on simple refinement of an existing product and its features. There are a lot of subjective factors involved in qualifying and Apple felt more secure by requiring some money to upgrade. The big advantage was not the income but the bi…

According to this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strate... :

"In 1996, 1999 and 2000, for instance, the California Legislature increased the state’s research and development tax credit, permitting hundreds of companies, including Apple, to avoid billions in state taxes, according to legislative analysts. Apple has reported tax savings of $412 million from research and development credits of all sorts since 1996."

$412M on the hundreds of billions Apple has earned since 1996 are pennies. That doesn't seem that much... Are there more?

Re: PC obsolescence is obsolete

#90

Post by steveh73 »

I would say you're right for most cases. But not for gamers or "power users":

* Game developers constantly up the ante. Try playing Battlefield 3 at 2560x1440 on Ultra on your 2008 PC and see how you go, if it even starts at all.

* Virtualisation has resulted in consolidation (for me at least). Whereas I might have had to keep around a Windows box to do testing, now I just fire up a VM on my laptop.

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